Nothing for Xmas

LOOKS LIKE I'M DOING N O T H I N G for Xmas this year. Boo-hoo!

The girl in the local shop asked what I was doing. I said why? She said because I'm working here! I said well I'll bring you a turkey sandwich. I make very good sandwiches. She smiled at that.

Anyway she's a Muslim!!

I found another entertaining article in The Sun newspaper about someone who got a Chinese tattoo... only to discover several years later that it doesn't say what she thought it said.

"Stunned Joanne Raine had lover Andrew Blanche's nickname "roo" tattoed in Chinese on her tum - and found out after they broke up that it said SUPERMARKET.

Joanne paid £80 for the tattoo in 2004 but only discovered its meaning days ago when she flashed it in a Chinese takeaway.

The Darlington lass, 19, said: "My friends are laughing but I'm embarrassed."

Worried about your Chinese tattoo? Email us a picture to features@the-sun.co.uk

Silly cow. If she knew anything about Chinese she'd know they don't have the sound R in their language. (It's the Japanese who don't have L. Thais have both but still mix the two up even in their own native tongue!)

Who'd get a tattoo in a foreign language they can't even read. Aparently David Beckham's Hindi tattoo across one arm has a spelling mistake in the graceful Devanagari script.

I don't blame Chinese takeaway staff for writing down jokes:

Here's another one:

... Proud Vince Mattingley, 44, who thought he'd had his name tattooed on his chest for 26 years, just found out the actual words read Coca Cola!

The actual "Chinese traditional" for Coca~Cola is 可口可樂 so it seems even The Sun newspaper got that wrong too. (Maybe the original tattoo was too rude to repeat in English.)

By the way Coca~Cola in Japanese is コカコーラ. They use the katakana syllablary to spell out foreign words. (& incidentally for onomatapoeic words like su-zoom (スズメバチ) suzume-bachi, which means hornet!) A バチ bachi in Japanese is a bee or wasp type buzzing critter fly thing...

Wanna know more about the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture? Go to this website:
http://www.hanzismatter.com

IT HAS BEEN UTTERLY FREEZING COLD THE LAST FEW DAYS AND NIGHTS (down to -5C in Norwich, where I used to live). So cold I've been waking shivering under my psychedelic pink and yellow blanket (where on earth Mother Hubbs found that one I'd love to know...) and had had to turn on BOTH rings of the hob to warm up.

Even my drug dealer was complaining it was too cold to come out of his car. But then drug dealers just want extortionate heroin profits without ever feeling beholden to their customers (which they are - for all that spare Chinese takeaway, cigarettes, mobile top-up, Playstation games, CDs, DVDs and all the other ephemera they blow their profits on money ...

I HAVE STASHED MY ROBBIES back in their tartan washing bag to keep warm. As for people who say that is cruel (to keep them in a fishtank in a bag, or to shove the tank in a cupboard or something) how can it be? As burrow-dwelling rodents who only venture out under cover of thick darkness they actually feel far more comfortable wrapped up like that. Like most other rodents they are short-sighted (one olde Englishe word for short-sighted was "mouse sight") - so they don't appreciate views. Views are things predators use in the wild to catch and eat such scampery furry morsels.

That silly Itchy went nuts the other day. Twice actually. One time she was so severely spooked by the running of a tap she took to darting up and down my arms and threatening to ping off... the second time the rustling of a carrier bag actually did upset her so much she did a backflip onto that famous pink-and-yellow blanket!

BACK TO THE CHILLY WEATHER. We have no heating or hot water at all! The repairman spent all yesterday running hosepipes out of the house. Then seemed totally to give up at around 4pm (which gladdened my heart as I hate having workmen in the house. Leaving the front-door unlocked all the time as they do...)

... and leaving our house like an ICEBOX at the same time!

And how was YOUR day?

***

QUIZ OF THE DAY:
Do you think this baby is a boy or a girl?
Clickonthis and study the ultrasounds....
I really can barely see a baby let alone what sex!!

***

Lorrikeets on a Queenslander's lawn!
This comes from Bimbimbie's blog,
which means "gledeber of the birds" in a mysterious Aboriginal tongue!

***

VIDEO OF THE DAY:
Victoria Wood: Let's Do ItThis is 1980s comedy classic